Page 79 of Hellbound

Roman let out an inhuman shriek in time with Marian’s own pained cry as static burst too close to her face. Her scar smoldered as the Remnant hybrid recoiled. She tore her gaze from Roman for a split second to glance down at the glowing flesh of her wrist. The mark burned bright; her bracelet pushed nearly up to her elbow. She shouldn’t have looked, but the pain was a deadly distraction.

A hand fisted the back of Marian’s hoodie and dragged her out of the path of another bladed limb sailing toward her. The Remnant missed and sliced the swamp of a bed in half, sending fragments of mixed material sailing through the air, beyond the scaffolding, to who the fuck knew where.

Fire raced up Marian’s arm again, engulfing half her body in agony too exquisite to bear. Again and again, the Remnant hybrid struck, and each time, intuition guided Marian to deflect them all with her knife.

Every blow sent a fresh wave of pain through her. Every act of defiance was met with swift punishment.

There was no hesitation between blows, no relief from torture. Each attack from the Remnant brought her closer to a precipice she couldn’t see. All the while, Tori’s hands on her back and shoulders guided her stumbling, winded body toward retreat. Keeping her just far enough out of reach that the Remnant hybrid couldn’t snatch her away.

You will fail, a tinny voice rattled around in her skull. You’ll give up. You always do.

That voice was right. She wasn’t a fighter.

Whatever Roman was now showed no signs of flagging. He’d outlast her.

But another voice resounded insider her, steamrolling her doubt with its command.

So end him now. All that he was is gone.

What? No. She needed to escape. That was all. But she was slowing, her body unable to meet her intuition’s demands. Roman may have been sent to capture them both alive, but the creature he’d become moved like it intended to kill.

She gritted her teeth, mustering every ounce of strength in her body to lash back at him, to try to get him on the defensive. She prepared herself for the Remnant’s next tentacled strike.

But Marian didn’t expect Roman’s fist in her face instead.

His knuckles connected with her jaw so hard, it popped. Silver stars went supernova in front of her eyes. She hacked around the blood pooling in her mouth. Tori shouted her name, but Marian was miles away. She didn’t realize she was falling until her backside met the carpet. Roman was suddenly on top of her, and Marian decided all was lost.

Then Roman’s weight vanished as Tori barreled into him, throwing him off her. Marian opened and closed her mouth, jaw clicking as she staggered to her feet in time to see Tori screaming as she ducked out from under the Remnant limb stabbing at her. Roman flailed and thrashed on the ground, his legs bending backward. He sprang up as twin tentacles of flesh twined with black ooze and sprouted through his shirt. They coiled around Tori’s legs and pulled them out from under her, dangling her upside down. The traveler screamed.

Marian turned the knife in her grip, pointing the blade away from her body as she blindly rushed him. Roman spun, blood trickling down his lips as needle-like teeth pierced them.

“You cunt,” he bellowed at Marian in not one, but many voices—whispers and screams all at once.

Marian couldn’t speak, much less think through the words invading her mind. They didn’t fit; they had no home here. And yet they slithered through her memories like one of her own. A voice of dread and despair.

“Binding is your word, this pact undying in this world and the next. Deliver us from this torment, that we may live free.”

The knife pulsed in her palm. Smoke and shadow poured from the blade and surrounded her in a vortex of possessive darkness. A single sentence chased away all other noise, including the phantom memory.

The same stern presence that commanded her to kill.

“Hold on.”

Roman barreled through the intangible barrier. He caught her around the waist and took her to the ground. The knife’s shadows tangled with the Remnant limbs. The surrounding pressure buckled; the scaffolding groaned. Roman howled in pain.

The scent of rotting meat hit her so hard that her eyes watered. She blinked through the wetness, watching horrified as new appendages of flesh and exposed bone burst from his torso, all dripping viscous black sludge. He crushed Marian’s head between his hands and roared into her face as his right eye ruptured, and a bloody tentacle burst free.

Marian screamed back in terror, clutching the knife to her chest.

“Why do you not come?” Roman howled, the sound of it raw and miserable. “Why do you forsake us? You promised. Deceiver. DECEIVER.”

Spittle and black tar spattered Marian’s face. Again, that ironclad voice commanded her.

“End him or die.”

Those words tangled with her fear and forced her body into motion. She gripped the hilt tight and angled the blade lower.

Incomprehensible noises tore from Roman’s ruined throat. His shredded lips flapped against his pointed teeth. Fear wrapped around Marian’s throat and squeezed tight.